The cliche question all authors hate:
"Where do you get your ideas?"
The idea is the easy part. The idea is so easy to get, you can't give them away. I'm here to give them away, to share them, and invite you to recognize yours. We're all creative. Not all of us pay attention.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Dreaming at the Idea Garage Sale

Apparently, I had an idea in my sleep last night. I had a character, a college student, who budded off different personalities on a semivoluntary basis, kind of like role-playing characters, except they manifested physically; kind of like split personalities, except they acted simultaneously and didn't have to share a body. At one point, a clinically depressed persona contemplated uninventing herself.

So, dream inspiration, right? Mary Shelley took her Frankenstein nightmare, which barely had a concept in it, and made a classic, so I could do something with this, too. Well, maybe. Except the dream itself made me feel so bad I woke up in the middle of the night, depressed. It was like being trapped in a room with the TV blaring repeat episodes of a tedious show about unpleasant people. I can see, intellectually, that the concept has some potential, but I disliked the dream so much I don't want to think about it enough to realize that potential. Maybe, when the aftereffects have worn off, I'll do that. More likely, I'll forget all about it. After all, it has no potential for use in the current book project, which is a realistic historical novel, and I need to focus on that.

That's the way it is with dreams. We all have them, all night long, and sometimes we make brilliant connections, but almost all the time we lose the connection, and sometimes even the imagery, shortly after waking up. That probably means we don't need to access this stuff with our conscious mind. The conscious mind is not the be-all and end-all of our existence, and the subconscious has needs, too. Many people maintain that the conscious and subconscious can be trained to work together through the use of dream diaries and so on. Maybe so. It's never worked for me, but a lot of things don't work for me that work for other people. Like, coffee. Steak. High-heeled shoes.

So what are your great dream ideas; and can you do anything with them?

About Me

Author of the YA story about meeting your idols above, time travel fantasies 11,000 Years Lost, Switching Well, and A Dig in Time; Edgar-nominated mysteries The Ghost Sitter and The Treasure Bird; and 7 other middle-grade novels. Plus the stuff that's not published yet.

Glossary

Bruce, Dr. Bruce = our male cat, Thai's brother
Campaign = a connected series of role-playing adventures
Clovis = technology developed in the late Ice Age in the Americas, characterized by beautiful and elegant spear points; by extension, the people who used this technology
Con = Convention or conference, i.e. gathering of like-minded souls
Damon = My husband, Michael D. Griffin. No, D. does not stand for Damon.
D&D, AD&D, 3E, 3.5, 3.75, 4E = various iterations of Dungeons and Dragons, the original role-playing game
Fen = Plural of fan; refers specifically to individuals involved in the constellation of related fandoms that game, read comics, read science fiction and fantasy, etc.
Fortean, Forteana = Weird, inexplicable stuff
Game = Unless otherwise specified, table top roleplaying
LARP = Live-action role playing. Not the kinky stuff, the wholesome playing-make-believe-in-the-wood kind.
Megafauna = Big Animals. Usually, the mammalian megafauna of the Pleistocene
Mid-grade = in publishing, the grades between easy reader and high school level, i.e. variously between 7-14 depending on the kid and the publisher
Moby Dick, Moby Dent, Moby = the great white car
Pleistocene = Ice Age
Recreationist = LARPing with a serious purpose, such as re-fighting Civil War battles without casualties, to understand historical experience better
SCA = Society for Creative Anachronism, recreating the European middle ages the way they should have been
soulsucking day job = every day job I ever had; mostly they were perfectly good jobs. I just don't belong in one.
Speed = Caffeine. Yes, I'm that sensitive.
Table top roleplaying game = Make believe with rules, dice, paper, and pens.
Thai, Miss Thai = our female cat, Bruce's sister
WIP = Work in Progress
YA = Young Adult, in publishing. A flexible term that can refer to an audience as young as 13 and as old as 21.